Sider

Dancers in colourful costumes busy themselves with cardboard sheets on the stage, placing them opposite one another, stacking them, or disappearing underneath them. The title “Sider” plays with the double meaning of the word: the idea of outsider/insider: the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion are explored by William Forsythe’s outstanding dancers on stage whereby boundaries are marked using cardboard sheets, only to be immediately shifted or stepped over. Complex speech patterns form the basis of this performance, even though language itself is a mere trace element –fragmented sentences written on the cardboard boxes, or projected in neon lettering onto the back wall – while Thom Willems’ soundtrack takes over. An old technique is being explored here in a new way.

The speech rhythm of Elizabethan theatre, similarly to classical dance, has cultivated a tradition of transfer from one actor to another for over 400 years. Forsythe takes up this tradition by using the film soundtrack of a late 16th century tragedy. The performers’ adherence to this vocal score creates unsettling configurations of devious musicality that the viewer cannot immediately decode, but that emphasise the themes of analogy and opacity in this drama – like a puzzle that can only later be put together.